3 out of 5

Produced by: Martin Atkins

Label: Sanctuary

It’s nothing revelatory, but Gravity Kills were definitely growing from album to album, continuing the impressive – not change, exactly, but – proving that they could play as a band and be more than a generic-angry-rock-featuring-the-word-“fuck” machine.

Superstarved won’t prick ears that have failed to be pricked before, but listen: You’ve got real sounding drums and full on riffs in there (not just industrial machine gun guitars), plus singer Jeff Scheel goes for a bit of range with his vocals.  Another industrial name-drop steps in to produce (Martin Atkins – PiL, Pigface), and he seems to take the great work Roli Mosimann did on the previous disc and push the band in a more rock direction, tipping them closer to their Depeche Mode leanings versus their NiNs ones (really the two main pivots for the band), which makes it especially fitting that they finally covered personal Jesus for the album.  Scheel’s lyrics find some space for metaphor, if lightly; the more impressive aspect of his contribution is his ability to bounce back and forth between the angry and poppy moods of the disc, which are supplied skillfully by the grooving backdrop of musicians.

I’m not necessarily going out and buying a Gravity Kills t-shirt today, but these tracks are a lot more polished and catchy than I ever would’ve predicted based on their cookie cutter debut.  It would have been interesting to see where things could have gone from here.  …Though they very easily could’ve slipped into Staind-type radio “hardcore,” so maybe all’s well that ends well.